Ex parte Merryman

Common card · No. 462900

Ex parte Merryman, 17 F. Cas. 144 (C.C.D. Md. 1861) (No. 9487), was a controversial U.S. federal court case during the American Civil War. It was a test of the authority of the President to suspend "the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus" under the Constitution's Suspension Clause, when Congress was in recess and therefore unavailable to do so itself. Generally, the case raised questions about the ability of the executive branch to decline to enforce judicial decisions when the executive believes them to be erroneous and harmful to its own legal powers. John Merryman was a prominent planter from Baltimore County, Maryland, who had been arrested at his rural plantation for destroying railroad bridges on which Union troops were traveling. Held prisoner in Fort McHenry in Baltimore harbor, he was kept incommunicado to judicial and to civilian legal authorities. While riding circuit, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney ruled that the authority to suspend habeas corpus lay exclusively with Congress...

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